


Bad Dreams

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love, Lust, Victorian Times, malnessa, older man younger woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: He is a man of flesh. A man of earthly desires scented heavily as soil after hard rain. A man who’s skin thrills to raw elements and acknowledges little regard for the spiritual realm.So, when he sees her at first, and thinks he sees a ghost, he is not only shocked, but humbled.





	Bad Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyRavenscroft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRavenscroft/gifts).



> Dedicated to a newcomer to my dreadful Malnessa ship. . . as always, to everyone thank you so much for reading and for all of the wonderful comments that make my day so special.

He is not a man who believes in the frivolities of ghost stories or fairy tales.

Indeed, he is not even a particularly god fearing man.

He is a man of flesh. A man of earthly desires scented heavily as soil after hard rain. A man who’s skin thrills to raw elements and acknowledges little regard for the spiritual realm.

So, when he sees her at first, and thinks he sees a ghost, he is not only shocked, but humbled.

She has appeared so silent and slender in his doorway, an apparition.

“Well, what’s wrong?” He asks. She stands there in her nightdress, raven hair frames her face, which is white as the fabric that barely covers her body. He starts to stand from his desk where he is burning the midnight oil, as one does when they are preparing for a two year voyage into terra incognito.

“I’ve had a bad dream,” she whimpers. Her fingers are pale and thin as the candlesticks they put on their tree at Christmas, and she seems to be clawing at the doorjamb as she bites her lip and quivers. He glances at the clock. Not even a single servant will be up at this time. He creeps from behind his desk, approaches her.

“You look cold, little love,” he says. He tries to make his voice sound nice. He tries to make his voice sound soft, what one might call yielding, or kind. These are not instinctual sounds, typically, for Sir Malcolm, but when he sees tears clinging to her lashes, he finds it takes little actual effort on his part. Precious little effort. “Come,” he bids. She seems reluctant to let go of the wooden frame, so he steps forward to collect her, leads her by the hand to the sofa near his desk and the warmth of the fire. Her hand is, in fact, chilled. With a small grunt, he nods at the settee and goes into his adjoining room. He grabs a fur lined robe and ferries it back to her. “You’ll catch your death of cold and damp. What were you thinking coming out of your room without your robe?” His words do little (precious little) to scold as he wraps his cloak around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. “May I sit with you for a while?”

“Of course,” he says. A part of him feels like he should remember to be annoyed that he isn’t working as he should be, but another part of him is pleased to place his body onto the couch next to her. “Did you wake Mina?”

“No. Your daughter sleeps like the dead,” Vanessa says and tries to smile, but she sniffles back the tears that have fallen. He pats his chest to find a handkerchief, and realizes he’s not wearing his jacket. He’s suddenly self conscious, wondering if she’s looking at his shoulders, or if she can smell the manly scent of him that is not hidden under layers of tweedy wool. As he is concerning himself with this moment of undue awareness, she surprises him by tucking her feet up under her and curling her body close to his, much like a household pet might.

The Murrays do not keep pets. Not living ones anyway. They have a solarium full of taxidermies- creatures that have long since breathed and beat their last and had been stuffed full of sawdust by the children. It’s such an odd thing that Mrs. Murray had been forever squeamish about having cats or dogs about the house, but allowed the children to play in a room full of death. The fascination of his young with their gallery of wild splendor had long been a source of pride for Sir Malcolm. And it pleases him as well how their best friend finds especial pleasure with the most virile and vicious of specimen. Hawks and other creatures of prey. Certainly not docile animals that would curl their bodies next to his on a sofa.

“Are you warm enough?” He asks.

“Yes,” she responds, and nuzzles her head against his arm. “Your fire is lovely.” She fits herself so snugly next to him, he has little choice but to extend his arm around her. She sighs deeply. “It seemed so real. I was so frightened.”

“Hmmh? Oh, your dream? It must have been terrible for you to be scared. I’ve not known you to be frightened of man or beast, Vanessa.”

“This thing, in my dream, it was neither man nor beast. It was a creature of shadows, perhaps a demon, and it came to me for reasons unholy. Utterly unholy.”

“There, there,” he says and his words sound hollow because he has such little (precious little) and poor experience in lending comfort. “It was just a dream.” He presses kisses down on the top of her head and smells the feral mix of things in her hair- the feathers of her pillow, flowers, the oil of her scalp. It is a strange, primal fragrance and his arm increases its tension around her. Even as she shivers, she is warm against his side.

She tips her face up to look at him. Some color has returned to her cheeks. “What were you working on in here in the middle of the night?”

“Preparations for my trip.”

“So you are truly going then?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you wouldn’t though.”

He touches her chin and allows his eyes to drift down to the translucent skin over her chest. “You’re not allowed to say that. You’re never allowed to say that to an explorer, Vanessa,” he says somberly.

“Would I be in your rooms in the middle of the night if I cared so very much for what was _allowed_ , Malcolm?” For the first time, in this private realm, she dares address him so informally. Her eyebrow tilts up, waiting to see what effect this has on him, but even as she waits, she puts her hand over his and strokes his big, thick fingers.

“Those eyes, so blue and rare, like sea holly in a wild garden,” he murmurs as he grabs her hand in his fist and holds it tighter than she would have expected. He lowers his lips to cover hers and she turns to throw a leg over his lap so they can embrace more closely. He clutches at her waist and feels the smallness of her, the fragility of her form without the hindrance of proper dresses and corsetry. The little moans she utters into his mouth are a sort of benediction and he knows he has done little (oh so precious little) to deserve such grace. He pushes her away. “Why are you here?” His tone is bitter.

She strokes his face. “I had a bad dream,” she whispers. “And you always manage to make me feel safe.”

“You should not feel safe with me, little love. You should not.” He clutches her shoulders with the great paws of his hands, and wants to shake her. It strikes him that there are tears returning to her eyes, but she does not look afraid at all.

“And yet I know of no other way to feel in your presence.” She wriggles closer to him so she is practically in his lap. God help him. “Will you take me to your bed,” she whispers.

“No,” he sighs. He beats frustration back into the shadows with a silver edged cane of will. He wants this fragile, savage creature with every fiber of his wretched being, but it is so awfully wrong. He almost hates her then, could almost snap her neck for making him feel so terribly desolate in his evil desires. “No, you are not for me.” Instead of murdering her for infecting him with this treacherous need, he kisses her forehead. He pushes her away and stands to pour himself a drink. He drinks it quickly and rubs his hand over his face. Then he drinks another. He pours more into the tumbler and brings it to Vanessa who sits still, and watches him curiously. She takes the glass and sips. “Do you know of Calypso?”

“The goddess? In Homer?”

“Yes. The one. She saved Odysseus from the sea, brought him to her gorgeous, garden of an island and tricked him into living there for years. She bedded him and provided him with any sort of delight he could have desired. She even offered him immortality. She tried to enchant him with her song and dance, and with her golden arts of weaving. Seven years, the myth says, she kept him with her. But he longed to return to his home, to his wife, Penelope. So his patron Goddess ordered Zeus to force Calypso to allow Odysseus to be free so he could return.”

“And you tell me this story why?” Vanessa sips her drink. “Do you liken me to a manipulative Calypso?”

“No, my dear.” He says.

“Then why?”

“You are all,” he shakes his head and resumes his seat by her side. “You are the goddess and the patron and the home. You are the dream of immortality. You are the golden lust and infidelity. You are the sea and the shipwreck, the voyage and the triumphant return. But I am no hero. Traveller though I may be, I am no Odysseus, and I have done precious little to deserve the likes of you in my bed.”

She finishes the drink and winces at the sting in her throat. “And what of me? What of what I want or deserve?”

“For tonight could we simply agree you deserve sweeter dreams?” His voice is neither gruff nor gentle, in fact, Vanessa has a difficult time naming it at all, and eventually decides he sounds very sad and weary to his soul, as though he is a sailor who has long struggled with the sea and is now about to allow the waves to engulf his head.

“Perhaps,” she says. “But I do not want to return to bed with Mina.” She climbs then, completely uninvited, into his lap and cuddles herself against his chest. She tucks her head under his chin and presses her ear to the hollow at the base of his throat where she can hear the flood of breath and pulse as it races in him.

He strokes her back, up and down, over the delicate bumps of her spine. He memorizes each hill and valley, selfishly names each for himself. He takes these little landmarks because they are all he can take, but he takes them greedily all the same. _What would she be like_ , he wonders? A lusty man, he’s always been able to look at a particular woman and tell what she would feel like, smell like, sound like under him. He could simply know at a glance which position would create the best fit and feel, and fulfill these fantasies either in thought or deed.

But not with her.

Even as he holds her body, even as he sweeps the hair off her neck to caress and then kiss the downy secret of her nape, he has not a clue what it would be like to surrender to the fleshy cave of this incomprehensible creature. He imagines only it might be a mystery from which he might never return. A dark deed. Utterly unholy and yet magnificent.

She grows heavy in his arms and her breath slows. He lays her on the sofa and arranges his cloak on top of her so she is covered and warm. In repose, she again resembles something ethereal and pale. He feels he could stare until dawn at the estuaries of blue that flicker against her wrists. But there is work to be done, and he is not a man given to whimsy.

He resumes his post to finish a letter.

“Malcolm?” Her voice is slow and sleepy and soft.

“Yes?”

“We will return, won’t we? That is the dream I should like.”

“Then you shall have it,” he says from behind the oaken vessel of his desk.


End file.
